There are only two monocultural entertainment properties anymore: Game of Thrones and Star Wars. And one of those is ending next year. So if you're David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, executive producers of the television phenomenon of the decade, and you're looking for your next project, there's only one follow-up that could possibly reach that level of popular success, and it ain't Confederate. And if you're Star Wars president Kathleen Kennedy, you're tired of having to replace inexperienced directors. You want proven hitmakers expanding the Star Wars universe.

That is to say, Benioff & Weiss will be writing and producing a new series of Star Wars films. The news only broke a little while ago, but you've already gotten the details by now: it'll be a separate series from the in-progress Skywalker series and the in-development Rian Johnson-directed trilogy. No release dates have been set, because they have to finish Game of Thrones first.

HBO gave Variety a "no comment" on the fate of Benioff & Weiss' next project, the controversial Civil War alternate history series Confederatewhich stirred things up as its premise posits a world where slavery was never abolished. Maybe the Star Wars films will give them a gentlemanly way to abandon that ill-advised project.

Since this Game of Thones-meets-Star Wars news immediately broke the internet, folks had some very strong reactions to the team-up.

This smart take comes from novelist Colson Whitehead, who won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for The Underground Railroad, an alternate history in which slaves are the heroes. He is overqualified to take shots at Confederate, which is to be about a future in which the Confederacy won the Civil War. But we're glad he did.

Benioff and Weiss are NOT directing their STAR WARS movies; only writing and producing. And given their prior work with Michelle MacLaren, there's a strong possibility she could even become SW's first announced female director.

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